The
leaflets are all gone, but when entire, the object must have strongly
resembled a Brobdingnagian feather. Compare this description with that of
Padre Bolivar in Ludolf, referred to above.
"In aliquibus ... regionibus vidi pennas alae istius avis prodigiosae,
licet avem non viderim, Penna illa, prout ex forma colligebatur, erat ex
mediocribus, longitudine 28 palmorum, latitudine trium. Calamus vero a
radice usque ad extremitatem longitudine quinque palmorum, densitatis
instar brachii moderati, robustissimus erat et durus. Pennulae inter se
aequales et bene compositae, ut vix ab invicem nisi cum violentia
divellerentur. Colore erant valde nigro, calamus colore albo." (Ludolfi,
ad suam Hist. Aethiop., Comment., p. 164.)
The last particular, as to colour, I am not able to explain: the others
correspond well. The palmus in this passage may be anything from 9 to 10
inches.
I see this tree is mentioned by Captain R.F. Burton in his volume on the
Lake Regions (vol. xxix. of the Journal of the Royal Geographical
Society, p. 34),[1] and probably by many other travellers.
I ought to mention here that some other object has been shown at Zanzibar
as part of the wings of a great bird. Sir John Kirk writes that this
(which he does not describe particularly) was in the possession of the
Roman Catholic priests at Bagamoyo, to whom it had been given by natives
of the interior, who declared that they had brought it from Tanganyika,
and that it was part of the wing of a gigantic bird.
